ZZ3Astro

Thanks calamita.. I might hold off on that for a couple of days then.

ZZ3Astro

Driveable. And driven

ZZ3Astro

Because this has taken longer than expected, I thought I'd look into just having a paint shop spray the car so it could get done for the trip. My friend will do it, but he is really hard to pin down for a certain date, plus we have to borrow a booth which limits the days and hours we can do this. And it's time consuming (my time) which I seem to be running short of right now. So I call around to a bunch of places. No one I've talked to can do it any time before the trip. One place has 55 cars on the schedule. Not only that, but the cheapest quote came in at $2500!! One place said "we cannot guarantee anything since we didn't do the body work: (I understand fully) and in the same breath "we have to do all of the prep over again, we have to sand and block the car and it will be about $3000" (say what? Don't even THINK about touching my sanding work!).

Hmmm $2500 is that in my budget? The original price it was going to be to have the car painted was $3700. This included nothing else such as windshield r&r, stickers, seals etc. I just figured up my costs so far in this project to get to the same point:

Paint store purchases: $ 846.45 (final paint not purchased yet)
Tools (weld puller, grinder, etc): $ 1434.63
Fired Body Shop bill: $ 381.60
------------------------------------------
Total so far $ 2665.68

Projected future expenses $ 650.00 (final paint materials - quality paint)
Total if I shoot myself $ 3315.68 (pun intended)
Projected labor someone else $ 1500.00 (cheaper than any quote so far)
Total if someone else shoots $ 4815.68 (so much for saving money DIY)

Now yes, I did get some tools out of this.. a grinder, cheapo water separator, nice blocking kit and of course that $1100 spot weld puller. I could sell that puller for $800 and bring the total cost down. Also the job is much more thorough than it would have been from a shop. Particularly the time spent under the hood. But the reality is I'm not really saving money by doing this myself. In fact I've skipped a lot of work to focus on this project. Every day I don't work I'm losing hundreds.

Depending how it turns out, I might be able to say I got a lot of satisfaction from doing it myself. If I had it to do over, I would have gone the 'find one just like it on ebay with 40k miles' route and put my turbo stuff on it. Then sold mine for $3k! LOL

Saga continues...

ZZ3Astro

Oh and on that idea of buying a low mile Iroc, I forgot to add in the following costs:

Seat covers $ 375
Carpet $ 150
Gaskets/seals $ 375
Iroc stickers/stripes $ 225
Emblems $ 190
Floor mats $ 165
Windshield $ 225
Hood insulation $ 50
and more!

Total $1755

Not complaining, just advising those who may be considering this path. I would have definitely been money ahead to spend $8000 on a clean low mile car. And time ahead on swapping my turbo setup onto it. (I'm at about 150 hrs into this project) Then I could have then sold this car for $3000. LOL

This thing had better look amazing!

Dante93GTZ

iTrader: (5)

Are you talking the Rod Run in Pigeon Forge, TN? If so, I hope to see the car in person! I'll probably have my two projects with me; My 91 Z28 and my 91 Formula - Both of which don't look the best at the moment, but oh well.

ZZ3Astro

Yes sir! I will be there with or without the Iroc. I really hope it's with. I'm staying in Gatlinburg so I'll have to make the drive to Pigeon Forge, but I don't mind sitting in traffic in the Iroc

Dante93GTZ

iTrader: (5)

Good luck with the traffic. Better get an early start; like 2am! I remember trying to make it through PF during the RodRun last year in my Z28 - I thought we'd never get through, let alone find a place to park!

Street Lethal

iTrader: (16)

You didn't have a problem with the engine and battery grounds to the frame? Did you sand down to bare metal then paint over the grounds in those areas, or did you hook them up right over the black paint....?

ZZ3Astro

I haven't even tightened up that main engine ground to battery cable yet actually. Since the battery is rear mounted, I ran a ground from the engine directly to the bottom of the old battery tray area. The other three grounds that I had to disconnect for painting, I put the bolts back in before spraying. Then when I removed them the original unpainted surface was still there and the bolts look nice

ZZ3Astro

Well it looks like my friend will be shooting it. He just came by and said oh! you cut everything in? I didn't realize you had it down this far. Just scuff those areas and we'll re-shoot the door openings while we're doing the car. Well that works out since I had a run on each side. LOL At least I got some practice with base/clear. Working on getting the booth now.. hopefully between thurs and sat it will be painted. I'm wetsanding everything out today and tomorrow.

ZZ3Astro

OUCH. These cans, consisting of PPG sealer, base and clear, plus activators and some cleanup supplies (the box behind the cans isn't mine)... cost $815!!!!!




Still waiting on access to the paint booth and have a ton more wetsanding to do tonight.

Dante93GTZ

iTrader: (5)

Does that mean you'll be taking it to the Grand Rod Run??

ZZ3Astro

I'll be doing everything in my power to do that!

Dante93GTZ

iTrader: (5)

Good deal! I'm really looking forward to seein' the car in person!

zz's z28

well god damn!

ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE CAR, I have the same car, just without the turbo setup.
cant wait to see the outcome. Good luck!

calamitascamaro

iTrader: (5)

Is that 9700 black? If so, you're gonna be the happiest black vehicle owner ever. When your done cutting and buffing the clear, take a picture of the clarity of that black. If the clear is quality, it'll show a pretty damn near undistorted reflection. I personally love that black, no brown tones, just straight, deep, black.

znate

We will be in Pigeon Forge but traffic normally isnt that bad if u come thru before 9am. if you wait any long yur screwed lol. sure hope i get to see this car in person it looks sharp so far!!

ZZ3Astro

Yep 9700 black.. base and clear are both concept and I'm told it will look good. Only thing is this black will show every speck of dust where the factory black would let you get the first layer on it without noticing lol. It's a driver not a show car, so I may regret it in the long run. Shall see.

I really hope I get to bring it for the rod run. Things are looking ok at the moment to do so. 9 AM huh.. you got a place to park already znate?

All of the stickers and emblems came in yesterday. It will be nice to finally have the "5.7 tuned port injection" emblem which was missing when I bought the car. Also my new power antenna rebuild parts arrived. Lots of work to do still to get this thing done.

ZZ3Astro

Supposed to be going to the paint booth tomorrow or Sunday! Picking up my friend's enclosed trailer today for transporting everything. Took today off from work to do a bunch of detail work, going back over everything, sanding wheel openings, refinishing the windshield wiper and vent screen area. Still need to finish the front air dam and wet sand the side ground effects. Otherwise in pretty good shape for painting!

znate

We just park where there is an opening lol...never had to pay yet and not got towed yet so thats still my plan!

ZZ3Astro

Strange thing happened tonight. I started it up (cold) to move it and had the overflow hose disconnected from the catch can and hanging over the AC compressor.. it shot coolant out all over the core support and hood latch assy when it fired! I've been suspecting this thing has a mild head gasket problem for some time now. Wouldn't be the best timing in the world for things to get worse.. but it would be my luck! Don't like to leave it sitting like this for that reason. Anyway we are 98% ready for the paint booth. I have to address a few minor issues in the morning and just waiting for word from the booth owner. Also I will hook up my MSD power wire and if painting doesn't happen tomorrow I will blast it around the block now that the hood is back on it. Maybe 13 psi will clear out any problems that might be lurking

drknow90rs_ss@y

iTrader: (3)

Make sure you clean it up really good! The ethyl glycol will keep your new paint from adhering to the primer. You will have some serious fisheyes if you dont. There are all kinds of stories about coolant contamination, including one "Coolant ruins bare metal and cant be painted, ever!" story I have heard, but dont really believe...

ZZ3Astro

Luckily it only got on areas that are already done. I aimed the hose forward just in case! Although earlier this week I did get a couple of drops of some on the top of the right fender. I immediately soaked the area with wax and grease remover and also resanded it. The good news is my car has been very thirsty lately and it's fairly diluted with water. We'll know on that fender pretty quickly I suspect.

Shadow Z

iTrader: (2)

You've made a hell of a lot of progress, that engine bay is gorgeous. Love your IROC man, I think I've checked out every single video you've got of it up on Youtube.

Feel like painting mine?

puma1552

iTrader: (1)

Car looks great so far, can't wait to see it with paint!

customblackbird

iTrader: (15)

Cars coming out good! i did my body work and paid 600$ for someone to spray mine. Now im going to do it myself.

Can i ask how u sanded the bumper? I had my car painted for 600$ includes base black and 2 coat clear (car was originally blue) I did the body work myself and took about 2 days... car is NOT a show car. But the paint the guy used chipped off the front bumper like sheets. my guess is that there wasnt any flex additive in the paint. Im going to shoot the Glasstek hood (4" fiberglass cowl) that i just got today and its used so the primer is fading. I wanted to shoot the hood myself in hot rod black (satin) and I thought about doing the bumper that way too. My paint guy wanted 250$ to paint the bumper and 250$ for the hood... SCREW THAT!! Id rather spend 70$ on paint and try it myself.

So i need to sand the paint off the bumper but i dont want to eat into the polyurathane. So do you just us hit it with 400 grit? Problem would be the layer of paint thats flaking off would all have to be taken off... how can i acheive this? The whole bumper/hood will be sanded to 400-600grit before paint. but i want to get this CR@P black paint off before i do so that way it doesnt chip off the paint im going to put on.

drknow90rs_ss@y

iTrader: (3)

Sounds like it wasnt prepped properly and the new paint had no "Tooth" to adhere to.
I have found that the best way to strip these bumpers is to use "aircraft stripper". It's available at most auto parts stores and cost is around $17.oo or so. Just follow the instructions and you will have it stripped down to the bare plastic in minutes. I like to use an agressive "Scotch bright" pad on them, as it does not tear it up too much when it comes to prepping the surface.

ZZ3Astro

I'm not sure what the body shop did on the nose, but it had several areas cracked and even chunks of paint missing. The two days they had it, they ground out the chipped areas and put some flexible filler on it. Once I got it back, we dry blocked it at 320 to get rid of the shiny. Then it was primed with 2k and wet blocked at 400. Some areas we found it better to use a flexible block.

There were a few more areas on the nose that I had to address after priming the nose. What I did was feathered the repair area with a block/320 dry. Then I used evercoat poly flex filler. After that set up I used a block with 320 or 400 wet to sand and feather it and spot primed. Then when that dried I used wet 400 over the area again.

On the front air dam/ground effect, I was left to fend for myself. I tried plastic bumper stripper. It barely touched anything other than the last coat of paint. I tried aircraft stripper. Then a razor blade (big mistake). I tried 80 on the DA. Then 50. That got some things going and after a few hours of labor i had it down to the plastic. I then wet DA'd to 80. Let it dry and put some poly flex filler on the gouges from the razor blade. I wet DA'd to 80 to feather the repaired area. Then after drying a day, I sprayed adhesion promotorer on it. Next I put a heavy coat of 2K primer with only half the normal amount of reducer in it. Then wet sanded that to 400 and it actually came out great. Would benefit heavily from a second coat of primer and sanding again, but no time left. I will likely replace that with a new piece in the future. We'll see how it paints.

Lots and lots of problems today. Last night I washed it down for 2 hours to get rid of all of the wet sanding dust. This morning I inspected it and several spots that had sanded to metal and had surface minor rust forming. I also found several scratches that I cannot explain in various areas and also many areas of the car had overspray from some base clear work I did up front last night. So I go to move it outside so I can go ahead and wet sand to 600 (not that I was going to, but needed to remove the overspray). Car won't fire. Megasquirt won't fire the injectors. Half a day later I get up with a friend of mine that has a spare megasquirt and a stim board. We quickly determine the MS is fine. Bad ignition module.

Met a cool chick working the auto parts store while picking up the new module. She has an 85 Firebird and is in love with the Iroc engine pics I showed her. Opportunity in ever situation . So now its running and it's after lunch time. So I wet sand the entire car. It feels good. I wash everything down and address the exposed metal rust issues. I blocked them and put Ospho on it. I will block them again tonight, use grease/wax remover and clean with some reducer. Then I will spot prime and wet block lightly.

Finished wet blocking nose and rear bumper. They are as good as they are going to get. I don't even care any more. I just want this job to be over. So I look over the car again in the garage. Now it has some kind of tiny drops all over it from the trees. They don't come off with wax/grease remover. It feels like overspray drops but very spaced out and clear. No idea what the paint would do with them. I scrubbed and scrubbed with the remover with no luck. Fortunately it's mostly on the hood and not on the other panels. My next effort is to try cleaning the entire hood with reducer. If that fails I will be back to wet sanding AGAIN. I barely have any primer left on the car now and paint it peaking thru everywhere. I'm not going to prime it again so I hope the new paint sticks to a variety of things.

Beginning to think it would have been well worth paying someone 7k to do it right. This hasn't been a cheap undertaking and I'm not sure its worth the stress over things going wrong.

drknow90rs_ss@y

iTrader: (3)

When you are done, it will be worth it. True pride of ownership comes from things like this. I would try to use a razor blade to remove the tree stuff, or at least most of it...

t-top havoc

iTrader: (3)

K, so I'll be bringing you another 1 for body work & paint!!
I'm about to have a break down waiting to see this black beauty!!
Great job you're doing!!!

ZZ3Astro

Ok it's mostly done. Couldn't get the booth until 3:30 and just got home at 12:45. We didn't have time to shoot the ground effects or wing. Very disappointed with the amount of debris in the paint. About the same as I got in my garage. Lighting was ok but no where near enough to do a proper job with this black. The body work came out fantastic but there are some minor sanding marks in various places (inward curved parts of the rear quarter in front of the rear hatch. It looks like the clear took care of them though. Had some fisheye on the nose in a few spots. Hood came out great. My painter friend screwed up on shooting clear on the inside of the front fenders so now I have to once again mask everything and paint there. Also worried about the base coat and clear on the outside edges of the hood vent recesses. Not sure what can be seen with them in place. Whole car is gonna have to be wet sanded and polished because of the spots in the paint. Also a couple of runs that will have to be dealt with.

I couldn't believe that spots would show up like this. I got so frustrated that I ended up staying out of the booth for the rest of the night.

All in all it will probably turn out pretty nice, but now I have a huge amount of followup work and I don't think I'll ever do this again. It's too stressful and way too time consuming. I would pay someone $7000 to do this for me next time. Now I have to take another day off from working to shoot the other parts. Then wait an extra day before I can put those back on the car. Plus I'll have to take another couple of days off to address the runs and wet sanding... if I want it to be done enough in time for this trip next week.

Haven't seen it in daylight yet so maybe I'll improve my mood but I was really expecting a higher level of completion by the end of the night. Not to mention the sanding I'll have to do.







No one took pics of the passenger side, but oddly enough it looks just like this side


My friends made it all possible! Thanks guys!

drknow90rs_ss@y

iTrader: (3)

It looks nice! Looks like your friend knows what he is doing, as there is very little orange peel. Black is the HARDEST color to paint, While white is the hardest color to match. (Some painters will say red is the hardest to match.) It looks like very little wet sanding will be required. Dont be so hard on yourself. With a little sand and buff, it's gonna look great! Black is just like that. You'll see when it's buffed. The place I used to work at was a european body shop (Glasuritt paint. =$$$)and had a 4 million dollar paint booth. The cars (Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, etc.) used to come out in black, looking like S&^T and a little work would make them look great again...

puma1552

iTrader: (1)

From what I can see, it looks pretty good! Do look forward to seeing more--a lot of that stuff can be corrected--it's not a finished product yet.

ZZ3Astro

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!! My engine bay is ruined!!! They accidentally let the hood close all the way and the safety latch poked a hole through the masking. The hood latch, intercooler, core support, wheel wells, silicons and aluminum tubing are all oversprayed with clear. Will have to repaint entire engine bay now.

Lot of nibs. I counted 18 per sqr foot on the hood and that is a clean panel. Does this sound high?

znate

Looks good imo you can still make Rod Run just stay at a steady pace!!

ZZ3Astro

Ok I finally got the nerves to 'unbox' it from the car hauler today. Looking over the whole job it does look pretty good. Color sanding is gonna take care of almost every concern. Here are the problem areas:

1> Passenger door body line isn't sharp enough on rear third of the door. I expected this as I basically ran out of time. Will fix this later and repaint the door, as I have half of all paint supplies left over.

2> Three runs/sags in the clear coat. I'm not sure how they ran this stuff. It is like magic honey from what I could tell from my shooting of the ground effects today. I could not get it to run period. Now that Omni stuff I used under the hood would run if a knat flew by. Definitely a difference in the good stuff.

3> A few areas on the hood are not perfectly flat. It is minor but of course I see them. Not sure how they made it past all of that long boarding! They were not in the expected areas. I supposed just a fact of life on some panels. Definitely not a deal breaker.

4> Nibs in the paint as mentioned above. It's really not 'that' bad just a lot more than I expected. I shot my ground effects in the garage today and they look about the same as the paint booth did. Maybe even a bit better. Go figure! Tried to pick up some 2000 grit today but the paint store closed 5 mins early! LOL

Going to put everything back together, get the seals in and the interior done. Then I'll start working on some color sanding and polishing if time permits. If not, oh well! Will do it after the trip. Looks amazing from 10 feet away hehe.












Slight run at top rear part of quarter. All of my body line work came out nice.




Painted these today. I think they'll work nice.

ZZ3Astro

I put up a video of the paint session and unveiling.. kinda funny ending when it rolls out of the trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hlPW6_jq8A

sailtexas186548

iTrader: (2)

when i painted my car i got the EXACT same run at the top of the left rear 1/4. weird!

looks good, make sure to sand/buff it soon, i waited a while and lost motivation, two years later it's still not done!

drknow90rs_ss@y

iTrader: (3)

I think it looks really good! Especially considering you are not a professional paint/body guy! A little sand and buff and you will be much happier. A little reducer on the un-painted parts that got oversprayed will remove the clear. (Careful though, reducer turns rubber white!)

Ticeblue

That is a great looking car once it is all put back together I bet it's even better

customblackbird

iTrader: (15)

well i picked up the aircraft stripper... and went by the instructions on the can. Layed it on thick and waited 15 or so min... and really it didnt do much. I tried to scrape it off with plastic scrapers and it barely came off. I then tried another coat and left it on for 15 min and it did the same thing. It seemed to soften up the polyurethane bumper as well bc the plastic scraper seemed to take some of it off too. but really it didnt work.

drknow90rs_ss@y

iTrader: (3)

I have heard that it does not work on all types of paint, but never had that kind of thing happen to me. Was it cold or warm when you were applying it?

ZZ3Astro

This was my experience as well. I spent $30 in stripper (two different brands at the paint store) just on one half of the air dam and it didn't touch the factory paint. Only the repaint layer, and not so good even with that. Then I log on here and see someone post pics of their nose with factory paint. Next day they post a pic and it's perfectly stripped using this stuff!!

Ticeblue

My cousin had aircraft stripper issues a few years ago....he bought some to take all the paint off his dirt bike and it was like instant peel and cracked the paint into flakes that you could just take your hand and brush off.....well he then about two weeks later wanted tondo the same thing to his $hit box civic and it came right off on the metal parts but wouldn't phase the plastic bumper he even soaked the corner of it in a bucket over night and it made the plastic rubbery but the paint was still on it.....just my input.

customblackbird

iTrader: (15)

it was low to mid 50's... i know its not the ideal temp but still it should still do better than it actually did.

drknow90rs_ss@y

iTrader: (3)

The temp makes all the difference. It does not catalyze at lower temps. There may be some paint additives that stop it from working. (Maybe, flex agent?) It stripped the paint right off a set of headers I had (High-heat paint.) and the front airdam of my yellow car. I did all that at temps over 80 degrees and just washed it off with a high pressure hose. I found the trick is not to let it dry. Keep it wet. I just SLOPPED it on there.

customblackbird

iTrader: (15)

Well i thought that to so i brought it inside last nite. Today i did it and it worked much better. Its still a really long process (took about 4hrs to do 3/4 of my front bumper). but it did work, amazing what 10 degrees will do lol.

But i have another issue, the bumper was a aftermarket replacement and its polyurethane, the bumper had cracks where the paint chipped off in large chunks, these chunks became dark orange and seemed to be "recessed" into the bumper. Almost like UV light from the sun hardened the poly and it shrank and also changed color in the proccess. I sanded it down as best i could but im also finding small divits in the bumper... just a few (like 4) like a piece of the bumper was gouged out. I was wondering what you guys would use to fill these small holes?

I wanna get this ready for primer soon. sry for taking up the thread.

ZZ3Astro

Well the paint is floating in the air once again. I had planned to have the car together enough to drive tonight and saturday night, with repainting of the engine bay on Sunday. Unfortunately I forgot to install the headlight brackets before the intercooler, so I decided to go ahead and finish the repaint work tonight. Really REALLY sucks to have to do this in the first place, but I guess that's part of the game. Shot it with the last of my cheaper Omni paint that I had used there before.

How much time does such a venture take? Well including the time to remove the cold side tubing, I started on this project at 4:30 pm. I just sat down (I did break for dinner) and it is 12:50am. My wife helped some with the prep but mostly me. So this is an 8 hour job with some short breaks mixed in. I didn't even paint the whole bay, only the wheel wells, inside eges of the fenders, parts of the hood hinge assemblies and the radiator core support across the front. The battery tray areas and back side of the headlight panel were fine.

drknow90rs_ss@y

iTrader: (3)

Merry christmas! Guess she had a little more paper! Lookin good! Sucks that you had to do that again, but at least you had leftover paint.

ZZ3Astro

Finally all together on the outside! Now have to decide if I want to put the stickers on and wetsand/polish around them or leave them off a long while.